One area that is improved significantly in NetBeans IDE 5.0 is the SQL Editor. This tip talks about that.

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One area that is improved significantly in NetBeans IDE 5.0 is the SQL Editor. In fact, there never was an SQL Editor before. In NetBeans IDE 4.1 -- and the releases before that -- you had a very small space where you could type SQL commands for sending to the database:

In the screenshot above, you really need to look for the space for typing SQL commands, it's very small. In NetBeans IDE 5.0 and above, you have a proper editor to use (click to enlarge):

What makes it a "proper" editor? Well, syntax highlighting, for example. And when you right-click in the editor, you get a pop-up menu with some cut/copy/paste menu items. And, one really cool side effect of having an editor is that you can (in not more than a few minutes) extend it. For example, here's a new action that I added to the SQL Editor's pop-up menu:

Not bad, huh? Editors are really cool, because you can extend them. How? How can you extend them? How can a menu item such as the one above be added to an editor?